Caught in His Gilded World

They nestled in the grassland that lay beyond the tower, Khaled perched on a fisherman’s stool and Gigi standing with a towel over her shoulder, a bucket of warm water and the cutthroat razor in hand.

‘You’ve never shaved a man before?’ he queried as she practised using the blade on a small section of her forearm, where fluffy golden hairs grew.

‘The opportunity has never arisen.’

She’d never actually lived with a man, and her former boyfriend had used an electric razor as far as she knew. Frankly, none of the boys she’d dated had been as hairy as Khaled. The male dancers she performed with had almost as little hair on their body as she did, and she had a regular appointment with the Bluebird’s beautician and her little pot of pink wax.

‘This makes me your first,’ he said, with a great deal of satisfaction in that deep, dark Russian voice that made her hand shake.

‘Yes, Khaled...’ she’d give him that ‘...you’re my first.’

He chuckled.

‘Thirty degrees to the skin...perpendicular to the edge,’ she muttered under her breath, and then she took the first stroke, running the blade up his throat.

Gratifyingly, only soapy hair fell away and no blood. Yet.

‘I still think you should have gone to a barber,’ she murmured.

His dark eyes flashed to hers and held them. ‘If you want the kill, your honour is the head.’

Gigi made a humming noise. ‘I’m going to leave that one alone. It sounds too weird.’

He chuckled. ‘I’m doing it for you—you should have the privilege.’

He was being incredibly patient with her, watching her face as she concentrated on the task, telling her he’d never seen a woman make so many grimaces in his life.

Finally she was done and he got up and thrust his face into the bucket of cold water, bringing his wet head up like a wild animal and shaking off the beaded residue.

Gigi stared at him in astonishment.

She was looking at a man she only half recognised. It unnerved her for a few seconds—perhaps because of the dream she’d been having since arriving in this strange place. In the dream she’d woken to an empty tower room. She called and called and when Khaled finally came up the steps he was a different man.

Silly. She gave a self-conscious laugh and reached up to stroke the clean sweep of his jaw. He grinned back at her. It really was Khaled. Just not as she’d ever seen him before.

The beard was gone, but so was something else—the weight in his eyes. And he was breathtaking.

If she’d thought it would render him more vulnerable she’d been wrong. The sweeping planes of his cheekbones and jaw lay fully visible; the clean, subtle lines of his lips and the strength of his chin gave him solidity. Sure, he was bleeding a little here and there, from her nicks and cuts, but it only added to his rugged appeal.

Now she knew why she’d clung to that idea of ‘just sex’. Thrust it at him constantly like a shield and a sword to keep him from getting too close to the truth. Or maybe to keep her own feelings at bay. She’d tried so hard to ‘be a guy’ about it, but in the end she was just a woman, with not a lot of relationship history, trying to make sense of how to be with this man. This big, tough, complicated man. The kind of man older, wiser women would probably reconsider before scaling.

She hadn’t hesitated.

‘What is it, Gigi?’

He wasn’t slow on the uptake. Any minute now he’d work it out.

She could feel his concern and it focussed her. ‘I missed a bit on your upper lip,’ she said huskily.

Trying to steady her hand, because she really didn’t want to end the life of the only man she could see herself spending the rest of her life with, Gigi scraped carefully along his lip-line.

Then she was done. He was clean-shaven, and she was suddenly aware that he was looking at her as if he knew what he was about to say was going to hurt her.

Gigi wanted to stopper up his mouth, but she couldn’t.

She couldn’t do anything but look at him as he said, ‘Gigi, there’s something you need to know.’

* * *

It had been her confession earlier this afternoon that had landed a hammer-blow to his decision to keep the facts from her.

If he didn’t tell her, and she found out from someone else, she might just start to hate him—and he didn’t want that to happen with Gigi. Not with Gigi.

He looked down at her. ‘Do you remember the resort my company’s building on Mt Elbrus? It needs a road and there’s been some difficulty with permission.’